Peru grapples with violent past
By BARBARA J. FRASER
Ayacucho, Peru
When a group of heavily armed men dressed in military fatigues
arrived in Huamanquiquia, a village in the central highlands of Peru, and
summoned all the villagers into the public square, Victoria Tayquiris
first instinct was to flee.
I said, Lets not go. Lets hide,
she said, but my husband said, No, we must go.
The decision was fatal.
With the armed men were two people in civilian dress. The men
divided the villagers into two groups -- those who knew the pair and those who
didnt. About 20 people who said they knew the two were shot, beaten or
hacked to death with machetes and axes, many of them in front of spouses and
children. The next morning, when the men had left, Tayquiri found her
husbands body.
For me, the sun turned cold that day, she said.
The ditches ran with blood. I felt as though I were in someone
elses body. We are mothers and widows, we are poor and we have no way to
support our families.
It turned out that the intruders were not soldiers, but guerrillas
of the Maoist Shining Path. Their attack on the villagers of Huamanquiquia was
apparently in reprisal for the killing of several Shining Path members.
As Tayquiri told her story in Quechua, her native language,
members of Perus Truth and Reconciliation Commission sat silently.
Several of them bowed their heads or grimaced as she recounted the details of
that day.
The widows were the ones most affected by the violence,
especially those who had small children, said commission member Carlos
Iván Degregori, who has done extensive research on the Shining Path and
the effects of Perus political violence. The Truth Commission is
going to pay special attention to the widows who were victims of the
violence.
Tayquiris testimony came near the end of the April 8-9
public hearings by the Truth Commission in Ayacucho, the capital of the central
highland province of the same name, whose apparent tranquility belies its
recent history.
During the 1970s, radical members of the Communist Party of Peru
recruited followers in Ayacucho under the guidance of Abimael Guzmán, a
philosophy professor at the National University of San Cristóbal de
Huamanga, where the Truth Commission hearing was held.
In May 1980, the group staged its first public act, burning ballot
boxes in the rural hamlet of Chuschi. For the next dozen years, Peru was
embroiled in a bitter internal conflict that pitted guerrillas of the Shining
Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement against the Peruvian police and
armed forces.
In the crossfire
Caught in the middle were civilians, mainly rural villagers who
had nowhere to hide. Typically, a column of Shining Path militants would enter
a village and harangue the residents, often dragging community leaders into the
public square, where they would hold a peoples trial and kill
them. They would demand food and medicines from the terrified villagers, then
melt into the hills.
For soldiers or police in pursuit, anyone who had provided the
subversives with food or medicine was a collaborator. Troops would drag
villagers from their homes in the middle of the night and execute them or take
them to local military bases or police stations for questioning.
When that happened, the families -- mainly women -- mobilized
rapidly, trying to learn the whereabouts of their loved ones or get messages,
food or clothing to them. Some were sent on wild goose chases from base to
base, only to be told each time that their relative was not there or had been
transferred. Others held on for weeks to promises that the person would be
released any day, only to have their loved one disappear.
Liz Rojas was 11 when her mother, a teacher, was detained by
police on an Ayacucho street. The girl became a regular at the entrance to the
police station, where she made friends with a young policeman who smuggled
notes back and forth between mother and daughter -- even though he also
admitted to being one of the womans torturers.
Then, suddenly, the mother was gone. Her final message: I
dont think Ill get out of here alive. Tell Liz to take care of her
brother. Tell her she must be strong.
Everything changed for me at that moment, Rojas told
the Truth Commission, all my dreams, everything came crashing
down.
Liz joined the countless women who frequented a place known
locally as Infiernillo, where the corpses of people who had disappeared were
often dumped.
We turned bodies over, she testified. There were
bodies of all kinds -- peasant farmers with their ponchos, men dressed in
pants, young women. We turned over body after body, but we never found my
mother.
About 30,000 people were killed during Perus political
violence, and more than 5,500 cases of forced disappearance or summary
execution were reported, nearly half of them in Ayacucho, according to the
Peruvian governments Ombudsmans Office. The real number of
disappearances may never be known.
Gathering testimony
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is halfway through
its 18-month mandate, has gathered testimony from more than 3,000 victims and
relatives of victims. The cases presented at the first round of public hearings
-- massacres and extrajudicial executions by the military, police or
subversives, as well as torture, rape and disappearance -- provided a
cross-section of the violence.
We arent holding a trial, said commission member
and former Sen. Rolando Ames. We arent even determining whether
what the witnesses say is true in every detail, because we cant verify it
completely. But it is sufficiently representative of what we find in this
region.
By the end of the first day of testimony, Ames said, the
main thing came out: This country still keeps alive the gap between the
mestizo, more Western world, where civil rights are respected and the law more
or less functions, and areas where the Quechua-speaking population still
suffers discrimination.
The racial and economic discrimination that made poor peasant
farmers bear the brunt of the political violence may be slow to change. When
the Truth Commission was initially formed under interim President
Valentín Paniagua (2000-2001), political squabbling immediately broke
out.
The commissions backers wanted it to look at human rights
violations committed between 1980, when the country returned to democracy after
more than a decade of military governments, and 2000, when the government of
former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) collapsed amid a corruption
scandal.
Legislators of the Aprista Party, which is led by former President
Alan García (1985-90), have been especially vocal in trying to limit the
commissions mandate or discredit its members. About 43 percent of the
forced disappearances took place during Garcías term, as did a
1986 massacre in which more than 200 inmates who had rioted at a Lima prison
were killed after they had surrendered.
Fujimori is known for the draconian antiterrorism laws instituted
during the early years of his term. The capture of the top Shining Path leaders
in 1992 essentially put an end to subversive activity in the country, although
several Shining Path columns are still active in the jungle.
What remained of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement was
virtually decimated in April 1998, when military commandos stormed the
residence of the Japanese ambassador in Lima, where 14 militants were holding
about 70 hostages. Two soldiers, one hostage and all the hostage takers died in
the siege.
Long road to reconciliation
Despite the rancor left from a dozen years of political violence
and eight more of Fujimoris heavy-handed rule, Ames is optimistic about
prospects for reconciliation among Peruvians.
Reconciliation isnt something abstract, he said.
It has to do with making opportunities to share the victims pain
and also listening to contradictory testimony. The road to reconciliation is
long, but I think well find the way. Were especially concerned that
this help strengthen the democratic governance of the country.
Others, though, are more cautious about how far a Truth Commission
can go in bringing about reconciliation. Richard Lyster, a human rights lawyer
who was a senior member of the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, was among those listening to the witnesses in Ayacucho.
If I close my eyes, listening to the testimonies today, I
could be in Johannesburg or Cape Town, listening to similar stories from men
and women there, he said. I have an enormous sense of
déjà vu.
Looking back at the process in his country, Lyster said, I
think the Truth Commission in South Africa tried to be all things to all
people. It couldnt succeed at everything. My view is that it succeeded
very well. I would say that we achieved more than 75 percent of what we set out
to do.
One issue on which members differed, however, was
reconciliation.
I saw [the commission] as essentially a truth-seeking,
investigative body, he said. People from the church had a very
different notion. They focused more on the reconciliation part. We werent
mandated to go out and reconcile people. Our commission was premised on the
basis that a full disclosure of the truth would in time lead to reconciliation
-- that the truth will set you free.
Lyster said that many attempts to bring opposing factions together
for reconciliation were artificial. Perpetrators didnt want to
shake hands with victims and vice versa, he said. Reconciliation is
a very difficult concept, and one that cannot be foisted on people.
For Fr. Moisés Morales Cruz, who was the Catholic pastor in
Huancapi, Ayacucho, the complexity of the violence makes the aftermath even
more difficult.
In Ayacucho, both subversives and soldiers turned their
backs on God, Morales Cruz told the commission. Over the years, he said,
he saw atrocities committed by the military -- although he was quick to add
that not all officers or soldiers were implicated in human rights violations --
as well as the Shining Path. At least once, he said, he saw Shining Path
militants pay off soldiers to let them go free.
Not with millions of dollars
It would be impossible to provide restitution to
children for the loss of their parents, he said, not with all the
millions of dollars in the world.
The Catholic churchs history during the political violence
is mixed. While priests, religious and lay church workers often remained in
communities despite threats, sometimes performing functions that were abandoned
when local authorities were killed or forced to flee, the churchs
official stance in Ayacucho was shaped by then-Archbishop, now Cardinal Juan
Luis Cipriani.
Cipriani, who publicly ridiculed human rights workers, was known
for hobnobbing with the military, a stance that prompted protest when he was
named archbishop of Lima and made a cardinal.
For Germán Vargas, who heads the Ayacucho office of the
Evangelical Council of Perus Peace and Hope Commission, reconciliation
must be a task for all churches.
The work of clarifying the truth and procuring justice for
the victims must be aimed at reconciling people. That is the best guarantee
that this tragedy will never occur again. Both Catholics and evangelicals must
begin to acknowledge what they failed to do, or what they did wrong, and ask
forgiveness, he said. There are many wounds that have not healed.
Our task is to accompany the victims, and it would be a good message to the
nation to see Catholics and evangelicals working together at this.
Rojas, whose mother disappeared 11 years ago, said On the
Day of the Dead, everyone in Ayacucho goes to the cemetery.
I dont know where to go. I dont know if I should
put out flowers. Sometimes I feel as though shes going to come back.
Sometimes I leave the door open so she can come in. But she never
returns.
Primitivo Quispe vividly remembers the day two dozen soldiers
arrived in Accomarca. As news spread that the troops were approaching, the
young men in the village fled into the hills, fearing violence. Arguing that if
the men were not subversives, they would not have left, the soldiers took out
their wrath on the remaining villagers. They raped the young women, then lined
men and women up separately and herded them into two houses. Locking the doors,
they fired automatic weapons at the buildings, then set them ablaze. Sixty-nine
people died in the 1985 massacre.
My village weeps and asks for justice, Quispe said.
My village will never forget.
Barbara Fraser is editor of Latinamerica Press, based in Lima,
Peru.
National Catholic Reporter, June 21,
2002
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